There are Horses Involved in the History of this Railroad!!

The two locomotives on the front of this post card are both GP-9 units.

The paint job on the locomotives do look similar to the old New York Central livery. That is on purpose. The New York Central Railroad is part of the very long history of the Finger Lakes Railway; so are horses!! This history is taken from the Finger Lakes Railroad's own website: https://www.fingerlakesrail.com/history.html On May 1, 1834, the Auburn and Syracuse Railroad was incorporated by the State of New York, one of the earliest chartered railroads in the United States. Its mission was to connect Auburn with the Erie Canal at Syracuse, linking Central New York's agricultural heartland to the waterway commerce moving goods east and west across the state. The Railroad opened for service on January 8, 1838. In its earliest days, the line operated with horse-drawn trains. Steam power was not yet standard, and the track quality of the era made horse traction a practical starting point for passenger and light freight service along the route. On June 14, 1839, the railroad introduced its first steam locomotive, named the Syracuse. It was a turning point: steam power dramatically expanded the line's capacity, speed, and commercial potential, and marked the Auburn & Syracuse's transition from a novelty into a genuine freight and passenger carrier. The Auburn and Syracuse Railroad merged with the Auburn and Rochester Railroad on August 1, 1850, forming the Rochester and Syracuse Railroad. The combined line now connected Syracuse westward through Auburn to Rochester, a far more commercially powerful route, spanning the heart of Central and Western New York. In 1853, the Rochester and Syracuse Railroad was absorbed into the New York Central Railroad, the emerging giant of American rail. The NYC would grow into one of the most powerful rail systems in the world, and the former Auburn Road became a key link in its sprawling Upstate New York network, carrying passengers and freight for the next century. As passenger rail declined nationally and major railroads struggled financially, the corridor passed through Penn Central after its formation in 1968. Penn Central's collapse and subsequent bankruptcy in 1970, the largest in US history at the time, set the stage for the federal restructuring of northeastern rail that would reshape the corridor once more. The federal government created Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) in 1976 to absorb the bankrupt Penn Central and several other failed northeastern railroads. The Finger Lakes corridor, along with former New York Central, Pennsylvania Railroad, and Lehigh Valley Railroad trackage in the region, came under Conrail's umbrella, preserved as a functioning freight artery through difficult decades. On July 23, 1995, Finger Lakes Railway began operations as an independent Class III short line railroad, acquiring 150+ miles of track from Conrail across six Upstate New York counties. A corridor that had been part of corporate giants for over a century was now in local hands, operated by a team focused exclusively on the Finger Lakes region and the customers who depend on it. Today, Finger Lakes Railway operates 150+ miles of track across Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Ontario, Schuyler, and Yates counties, moving more than 18,000 freight cars annually with a fleet of 13 locomotives. The 76-mile main line from Syracuse to Canandaigua still follows the general alignment first surveyed nearly two centuries ago. The names on the locomotives have changed. The mission has not.

The photo was taken by Thomas Trencansky. He was a very active and popular railroad photographer. He died on June 19, 2012. There are many tributes to him at this website: https://railroad.net/tom-trencansky-has-passed-t98503.html and the post card was published in 1996 by Mary Jayne's Railroad Specialities, Inc.